Living with Luke: Ken Pavia Discusses Days 4 and 5 on Lifefood Diet

You can say 10 degrees, but those words have no meaning unless the wind chill hits you in the face and runs right through the TapouT hoodie and into your bones. Layers or long johns, Pav — learn it. Plus, I shed an extra layer of insulation as the scale told me 189 lbs. this morning. That is 8 lbs. in four days with nine more days to go.

I spent a ton of time today working on the logistics of my fighters’ participation in the big WCO card in San Diego. I am arriving back in Cali the day of the weigh-ins, and this is going to be an awesome event. OK, I am a little biased as I have seven guys on the card. I also bugged the producers of “The Ultimate Fighter” as I have four guys in the final consideration for next season, and we are day-to-day on whether they are getting on. I also text-messaged Showtime back and forth a few times as we are negotiating for a televised fight on their January “ShoXC” card. This could be a big opportunity for one of my younger guys.

Finally, I came to an agreement to be the in-studio guest on “Inside MMA” on HDNet for a third time (one more than Josh Barnett). We film the Wednesday after I get back, and it airs a number of times starting the following Friday, Jan. 18. They really have a great staff over there, and it is professionally run — from my buddy Ron Kruk on the road to Hank Siegal, Jerry Cole, and Kevin Watters in-studio and of course Kenny and Bas on set. The trip is almost worthwhile in and of itself for the shy makeup artist who does wonders.

In the big news today MMA Agents signed Aaron Riley, who is a UFC, PRIDE, BodogFight and IFL vet. We are very proud to add him to the team and look for big things from him in 2008.

Heath Herring and I have something in common. We are not gay. If you don’t get that joke, ask a Japanese MMA fan. In fact I am self-admittedly a touch homophobic. So we are back at the Turkish bathhouse in Manhattan tonight, and I am in the Russian Radiant Heat Room. The steam is so thick you can cut it with a knife. All the a sudden, a male voice next to me says, “Excuse me, would you like to sit next to me?”

I am a little moody because I have lived on seeds and nuts for four days now, and again, there’s that little homophobic thing. I spin around ready to throw. My God, even I cringe at the thought of The Pav in a loin cloth throwing down in a bathhouse steam room. As I turn to engage, I do a double-take. Lo and behold, it is Benji “The Razor” Radach. The irony is that it’s Benji who just fought in the IFL Grand Prix Finals on Saturday, and I have been text-messaging him for two weeks working on adding him to the roster. He even texted me from his locker room Saturday night. He is from Ft. Lauderdale, I am from Huntington Beach, and we bump into each other, figuratively, in a bathhouse in New York City. Well, at least he didn’t offer to push in my stool.

Some background on our relationship. I met The Razor in Costa Rica at a BodogFight event. It was there that I learned the guy does everything on 12 — train, fight, and party. As a side note, I will always refer to him as The Razor because I already have a Razor in the stable: my road dawg, “Razor” Rob McCullough. I have a lot of admiration for The Razor as he had a very successful career interrupted by injury and has been on a tear in the year of his comeback. People whose opinions I really respect — like Jeff Sherwood, Phil Baroni and Joe Silva — speak very highly of him and his potential. This year I signed Dennis “Superman” Hallman (the other guy with two wins over Matt Hughes), and The Razor cornered him in Strikeforce. We hit it off, and he approached me about representing him. We have had active dialogue since, and here he is in the bathhouse. What are the odds? We hung out in the aromatherapy room, Turkish steam room, and talked shop for a while — as many heterosexual males would do. His ear is a black frickin’ mess. Apparently the outer ear had filled with fluid before the fight, and then during the Horowich fight, it “popped.” Benji went into graphic detail of the draining process and the stitches through the cartilage without a numbing agent. He split with his buddy to get some sushi, and I slipped into a daydream about sushi as I went to Jubb’s Longevity and ate some more seeds and nuts and stuff.

Luke often hands me glasses of “milk” that are really liquefied Brazil nuts, strained, with seasoning. He was physically ill from his flush today and was chugging the milk at an alarming rate at the deli. My flush is tomorrow; I am less excited. I had a little milk, then ate a spicy cilantro soup with some dehydrated flaxseed chips. Not bad. I was full, but Luke asked if I wanted dessert. Before waiting for the answer, he handed me carob milk, which was actually really good.

Day 5

Today was the worst by far.

So when I woke up this morning, there was a note on my computer. It said drink the dirt in the glass, take the herbs, and drink the tea. Luke had left to go to Matt Serra’s gym and knew I had a ton of work so he laid out instructions. I stepped on the scale at 189 again and was so upset that I didn’t consume anything for a couple of hours while I returned calls as if the two-hour fast would move the needle. It didn’t.

Luke got back, which made me feel guilty for not consuming, so I manned up. By now the mud in the glass had separated and formed odd layers. I stirred and chugged. I knew there was a problem as soon as it hit my taste buds — then the consistency hit. The only thing I could think was that the dude was messing with me. (“Let’s see if we can get The Pav to consume a glass of mud from the side of the road.”) I went over to his apartment in the triplex where he and Lara were playing a Wii game, and as soon as they saw the look on my face, they started laughing. He explained that is was ground up minerals mixed with water that was preparation for the flush later. OK, so it was dirt — or more accurately, mud. I bought the explanation anyway. Hey, I am down 8 lbs. in Day Five. As I have stated, I am down for the cause short of the urine thing. And so the day begins.

“Meal” No. 1 was olive oil. I prefer it with a little vinegar, salt and pepper — and crusty Italian peasant bread. We sipped eight oz. of it through a straw. It was like drinking liquefied lard. Needless to say I have been burping it all day and have the worst fried food stomachache. I am told this is to help dislodge the stones. I am beginning to really resent these damn stones.

We are going to file coffee enema right next to skydiving and drinking shots of well tequila in Tijuana as things we were dumb enough to do once in our lives but never again. That sucked — bad. It wasn’t as if getting the two quarts of coffee jammed into your intestines was bad enough, but keeping it there for 10 minutes was pure hell. There was the intense cramping and shooting pain, the visual lumps in your stomach as you lay on your side, and the uncertainty of the power to keep it in. Luke instructed that you have to literally massage the liquid through your stomach to the gall bladder. I told him to go f@#k himself. He said something about nobody likes wind sprints either. Yeah, yeah. Well, let’s just say, not solid anymore. The real test was trying to determine when you were really done getting rid of it and the best way to clean up. After Kobe Bryant was forced to wear the retro circa 1984 Lakers game shorts a few days ago, he said he felt violated. I shared his sentiment.

We headed over to Ray Longo’s gym so Luke could do some paperwork. I talked to Pete “Drago” Sell for a while — good people. He is coming off a shoulder injury, so he’s on the shelf. Love him or hate him, he is very entertaining, and I appreciate his New York ethnic personality. Chris Lytle said to me today that, in his opinion, UFC fighters are getting so skilled they fight not to lose, and he wants someone that just wants to bang like his last fight. Drago, albeit not in his weight class, fits this mold. We had talked in Las Vegas about my Luke project, so he wanted to know how things were going. While this diet seems like a cool thing to most Southern Californians, New Yorkers think you are literally insane for even trying it. Drago said as much.

The day ended with more dirt on fruit and some soup for dinner. There were three different kinds of crackers, which are really dehydrated seeds and nuts and stuff. This was the high fiber “brooming” meal that is supposed to get those damn stones out. Be gone already. The day ends with phone calls as always, one of which is Eric “Bad” Apple, who in a very concerned tone asked, “Why would you do that?” to the day’s events. He then admitted to having a colonic once; there, you have been outed, Apple. Just hoping this nausea and bloated feeling subside. We didn’t train today, and think I may need to break a sweat tomorrow. I imagine every runner feels great the first quarter of a marathon, and somewhere in the middle, the reality of the fact you are in a 27-mile run hits. My reality hit today. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and at the conclusion of Day 5, I run on…

Ken Pavia runs Pavia, Ciscone, & Associates (MMAAgents.com), one of MMA’s biggest sports agencies and one that represents approximately two dozen UFC fighters. “The Pav” is chronicling his two weeks of training and dieting with eccentric UFC fighter Luke Cummo for MMAjunkie.com. Cummo is also chronicling the experience at LukeCummo.com. Pavia’s columns will be available every few days here at MMAjunkie.com.

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